Hello to all the mothers out there and an even bigger hello to all the children that want to please their mothers!

For you all that are still wondering what kind of treat you can give your mother, how about a meal at Standing Sushi Bar 8 Queen Street? We have a special Mother’s Day set available for 35 SGD… and don’t worry if you can’t make it on Sunday, it will be available from May 13 – May 20 so you have a week to celebrate with your mother!

Frequently after looking at a restaurant menu, I think, “Well, a bunch of the stuff looks good but I don’t really know what to pick.” However I don’t to take the effort of narrowing down exactly what I’m going to eat.

And that’s where Omakase (chef’s choice!) comes in.

You essentially leave it up to the chef to select what you’re going to eat.

At Standing Sushi Bar 8 Queen Street we are introducing a basic omakase for 29 SGD. It comes with 6 selections as well as rice, salad, and miso soup. The chefs will be changing this on a weekly basis so the picture above is just an illustration. Expect fish from our sushi bar, some items from our robatayaki counter, and then offerings from our kitchen.

Next time, leave it up to the chef! Book a seat by calling 6333 1335 or reserving online.

Hello everyone! It’s been awhile since I’ve written about what is going on with Standing Sushi Bar. Aside from the entries about various promotions and menus that we are trying out I feel like I haven’t gotten a chance to talk about the other things that are happening. I suppose a big reason for this is, like any small business, when the owner gets busy certain things go on hiatus.

On the personal front I left my career of 14 years – I used to be a… I don’t know, community manager, platform evangelist, software tester for Microsoft and now I’m focused on building my own business. I thought there would be a month of having a good break but surprisingly opportunities came a-knocking and I’m working on a few different projects. One of the hardest things is to focus! Too many ideas, too little discipline to handle them all, and too many video games still to be played.

Indonesia

The first branch in Indonesia (Standing Sushi Bar at La Piazza) opened on January 15. We’re in the midst of finding a location for the second branch. Exciting! It’s crazy to think of simply how much larger Indonesia (and Jakarta) is compared to the tiny confine of Singapore. Certainly a prime location in Jakarta would be awesome but there are so many cities that are underserved by Japanese restaurants that the potential is great. Factor in significantly lower costs for rent, wages, and setup and you can see why so many businesses are trying to move into the country.

Look ma! So much space at Standing Sushi Bar La Piazza!

Singapore

I don’t know whether I can credit our Monday promotion, feng shui, or some random thing I did on the internet (bookings through Chope? Loyalty built through Perx?) but it’s as if folks have started stumbling into the 8 Queen Street restaurant. Business is up significantly (I hope this doesn’t jinx anything!) so that’s definitely great, especially after a hard 2011.

Maybe it’s cause I yelled at the air-conditioning people and finally got them to fix it? Hmm.

Over at Standing Sushi Bar Marina Bay Link Mall things have been chugging along nicely. We introduced new dinner sets and that has helped bring in more customers outside of the Raffles Place lunch hour crowd. I’ve been working on trying to get delivery started but it has been much harder than expected. Short of building a web ordering platform from the ground up, most of the solutions out there are tailored for the US market. There’s lots of room for growth over there (read: anything outside of lunch hours) and I’m excited about the upcoming opening of Marina Bay Financial Centre Tower 3… since it will bring in a ton of DBS Bank employees and it will be the biggest office tower in Singapore. On the flip side it is also going to bring in more competition with something like 11+ new restaurants, including a food court.

Expansion

Grow, grow, grow! I’m looking for new spaces to open Standing Sushi Bar in Singapore (and if anyone wants to talk about other countries, I’m open to it!). I was keen on the upcoming UE Biz Hub but not keen enough to sign at the rent they wanted. I’m hesitant about the amount of office crowd at Changi Business Park that is willing to spend on lunch at a price point above $8. With the opening of the Changi City Point mall and the upcoming UE Biz Hub, I feel like there will be a glut of restaurants all competing for the same type of customer… which is fine for an area like Raffles Place but possibly not for Changi Business Park. It will be interesting to see how these malls evolve.

New Concept

In a “spin-off” to Standing Sushi Bar (can you spin a restaurant off like a sitcom?) I’ve been working on a new food concept. I’ve almost settled on the first location for it, but since discussions with realtors and landlords can change at the drop of a hat, I can’t y where yet. I’m excited but also nervous about how fast this one is moving along.

Raffles Place has a lot of quirks when it comes to having a restaurant there. From 12 PM – 1:30 PM it’s a sea of people… literally foaming at the mouth, flowing through the hallway and flooding the restaurants in the area. After 1:30 PM the people quickly recede back to their offices and it’s a slow drip until 6:00 PM when people start dropping in for dinner.

Since it’s the business district, people need tea breaks and places to hold chats; I figured we should offer a tea time special for the Raffles Place crowd that is looking for something different from the coffee and cakes.

February 14 is just around the corner and that means love is in the air. Cue romantic music and visions of roses, rings, and magical red hearts. Not surprising that all of our reservations on Valentine’s night are for groups of 2. With that in mind, we are offering a special Valentine’s Day meal at Standing Sushi Bar 8 Queen Street and another set menu at Standing Sushi Bar Marina Bay Link Mall.

One of the fun things as a restaurant owner is that you get to do what you want to do. And what I feel like doing right now at 2 in the morning is creating a mega super amazing unbeatable best Japanese food promotion for the most dreaded day of the week. Monday.

*Updated on April 11, 2012 – due to the overwhelming popularity of this promotion and the fact that we make a loss on each salmon sashimi, we need to increase the price to 3 SGD for the salmon sashimi… which is still crazy, crazy, crazy!

Voyage Night Festival 2011 is taking place this weekend in the Bras Basah area. It’s a collection of exhibits, performances, and installations being held on the museum grounds as well as the SMU campus. I believe admission to the museums (SAM at 8Q, Singapore Art Museum, National Museum, Peranakan Museum) are free during this period.

Standing Sushi Bar at 8QSAM will also be open until midnight on August 26 and 27 as well as September 2 and 3. Come get a little culture!

Ah, restaurant ownership… the picture in people’s heads is of a proprietor, mingling with guests, flitting from table to table and asking them how the food was while dazzling them with a charming anecdote or two about funny customers.

The reality is crouching on the floor at 1:30 in the morning stuffing A4-size paper into sticky plastic pouches to shove through the laminating machine. Is it just me or is inserting paper into these pouches one of the most frustrating things to do? You stick it in and the corner of the paper juts out which means you have to peel the pouch cover back and try placing the paper again.

I use blogsearch.google.com to keep on top of what folks are saying about Standing Sushi Bar. It’s a great tool to find out what people are thinking and how their experience at the restaurant was. Plus it’s simple to use; I just type in “Standing Sushi Bar” (including the quotes) and if anyone has written about the restaurant, I’ll see it. Plus they include a date filter so I can see which our the newest entries.

Here are some recent reviews:

Sparklette – “Standing Sushi Bar‘s high quality, fresh and affordable Japanese food has stood the test of time, the standard remaining consistent over repeat visits to the different outlets.”

爱makan – “Attentive and prompt service, easeful atmosphere, economical sets menu and gratifying grubs. Tell me who in the right mind won’t be back for more?”

My World – “If you are looking for somewhere to eat fantasticly fresh seafood, this is the place to go.”

Blurting – “We also ordered fried Yakiudon which was one of the best I've ever had… just when I thought dinner was over, a mixed sushi platter was served. The sushi was good - fresh fish with small amount of rice underneath. The California roll was delicious.”

I admit I’m addicted to the Singapore Seen section on Stomp. While they bill it as a lofty site for citizen journalism, it has turned into a portal showing the ugly side of us all living together on this tiny island.

Is this country really debating whether an able-bodied person should let an elderly or pregnant commuter take the priority seat on public transportation? Isn’t the answer obviously “OF COURSE?”

The government has run campaigns to encourage kindness and graciousness. I’m not sure what the results have been, but it seems many folks are motivated to take action only if there is a concrete payoff.

So us here at Standing Sushi Bar are taking our sushi sensibilities and wading into the teeming, seething mass that is the Singapore public. Our goal? Encourage people to be kind – it will make Singapore more pleasant for all!

We’re sending our ninjas out across the streets, trains, and buses of Singapore. Armed with these kindness cards, if they see you doing something nice then you get free sushi! Give up your seat on the MRT, hold the elevator door open, pick up some litter… no act of kindness is too small.

Hello dear little sushi blog. I feel like I’ve neglected you. What can I say, it has been busy times. We have been undergoing a lot of change at Standing Sushi Bar. New menus, new chefs, new ideas. Multiply it all times 2 since the two branches are essentially different restaurants.

I won’t sugarcoat; things are currently difficult. Just as the Marina Bay Link Mall branch was clawing its way to success, the flurry of recent news about Japan has affected it again. The 8 Queen Street location is still hurting from when the Japan incident first happened in March.

Since business is a little slow I have been thinking about how to bring in more customers, especially to the 8 Queen Street location. Two things I considered were price point and ease of getting the food. Certainly lowering the price should broaden the customer base and making the ordering process less intimidating should help. That was the reasoning behind the introduction of the sets during dinner and lowering the starting price to 13 SGD.

I’ve also been thinking about the awareness of the restaurant. Standing Sushi Bar has been in the news and major publications on a regular basis, so I feel like people have at least heard the name. However awareness of the name is very different from an understanding of what we offer and why a diner should come in. That is something I need to work on – hammering it into people’s minds that we have high-quality food at a very affordable price and one of the largest sake selections in Singapore.

One tiring yet interesting activity that I did recently was putting flyers on the door of every HDB flat in the Queen street area. Door-to-door walking, I felt like an MP making their rounds. I used to really dislike flyers but I have to admit that for reaching out to people directly around you, flyers are effective. And have you met the folks that potter around at home in the middle of a weekday? Quirky and welcoming. I was worried they would mistake me for a loan shark runner splashing paint on their door; I was surprised that some people would come to the door and take the flyer and then chat with me about the restaurant.

The next thing I want to focus on is getting the sake bar started. Currently people are in the dining section but the bar area is under-utilized. One issue is that we close early at 8 Queen Street; a drinking spot needs to be open later. Chicken & egg – if there is no one drinking at the bar, do I want to keep it open late? Or do I need to keep it open late in order to get people to start drinking at the bar?

Those appetizers above go quite well with sake, by the way!

Over at Marina Bay Link Mall we’re also revamping the menu, particularly for dinner. We need to add more cooked food… the tricky thing is that the open kitchen there is very small and we have to ensure that we don’t smoke out the restaurant.

Finally (thank you Li-En and Sufen who have helped brainstorm this) we are working on starting a delivery service for the Marina Bay Financial Centre, One Raffles Quay, and One Marina Boulevard buildings. Hopefully I can get that running soon.

It has been a looooong time coming (I’ll explain the reasons in another post) but finally we have dinner sets! No longer will people have to page through our a la carte menu and wonder how they can construct a meal. After a hard day’s work everyone just wants to relax.

So at Standing Sushi Bar 8QSAM we have created a new set menu that applies to lunch and dinner. Best thing is that we changed the price points and now the set meals are from 13 SGD onwards!

Election fever has gripped Singapore, and the candidates getting the most attention are Tin Pei Ling from the People’s Action Party and Nicole Seah from the National Solidarity Party.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I meet someone new, I wonder what they would be like if they were a sushi roll.

I gathered available information about the two candidates and then gave my interpretation to the sushi chefs for them to create an actual roll. Isn’t it convenient to own a Japanese restaurant?

Tin Pei Ling roll

Nicole Seah roll

If you want to find out how these rolls taste; they’re available from now through May 7 at Standing Sushi Bar 8QSAM for 10 SGD each!

COMMENT CONTEST – submit your interpretation for how the above sushi rolls are like their namesake or come up with your own description of a Tin Pei Ling / Nicole Seah sushi roll! Best comment (as judged by me) posted by May 7 wins a 25 SGD voucher to Standing Sushi Bar (be sure to leave your e-mail address for contact)

One trait of Japanese restaurants seems to be the huge number of items on their menu. This is a trait that Standing Sushi Bar also has. Diners come, take a look at the menu, and many end up feeling overwhelmed by the number of choices. I can understand. People like a variety of food during a meal, but the effort it takes to wade through a large menu makes them want to stick with the basics they can order off the top of their head.

To help alleviate this, we have created some multi-course gozen sets for lunch and dinner. Perfect for the lazy diner who wants to eat the highlights from the restaurant (i.e. a diner like me).

Since opening the restaurant, I find myself cursing weeks that have holidays, dreading the payday at the end of the month, and staring out the window wishing the rain would stop.

Why?

Holidays – two branches of Standing Sushi Bar are located in the Raffles Place business district. Since it’s the business district, the majority of the business occurs during the weekdays, especially the lunch period. That’s 20 days a month to sell enough sushi to cover rent, inventory, payroll, etc. On those 20 days a month, you’re really looking at a 2 hour or less lunch rush each day. 40 hours to make enough money for expenses and hopefully some profit. When there is a holiday, that’s cutting into the 20 days a month… now you’re down to 19 days. Plus people like to extend their holidays by taking the weekday before or after as vacation… now 18 days. Difficult.

Payday – As a small business, and as the person doing the administrative work, the act of writing paychecks is the manifestation of money flying out of the pockets. Calculating CPF, writing checks, printing payslips, etc. for 25+ people is a mixed feeling. It’s great that the staff will be happy and flush with money, but the drained account and tired wrist make me (sad face).

Rain – I’m like a crazy Native American during the week, trying to do rain dances at lunch time. When it rains the folks in Raffles Place don’t want to get wet so they stay in the underground malls where two of the restaurants are. It’s a definite full house when it rains during a weekday lunch. On the weekends it’s our 8 Queen Street outlet that we have to rely on for business… that’s located at the Singapore Art Museum and in a neighborhood where people are only going to come when it’s pleasant weather. So weekends like this one where it has rained nonstop kill the business. (Sad face)

This week is the trifecta – I’m sitting here at home on a Sunday night, listening to the sound of the rain while writing all the paychecks to hand out tomorrow before we close for the long Chinese New Year holiday.

I was thinking about growing the number of fans on the Standing Sushi Bar Facebook page. There were a few campaigns in my head, some ideas to encourage folks to share the Facebook page with their friends… but then I decided to try out a low-effort way first: pay for a Facebook ad.

I had done this before with what I considered reasonable success. Ran a Facebook ad for a period of 3 weeks which resulted in the fan page growing from around 400 fans to 1,100. I was very targeted with the keywords and demographics so didn’t reach out to many people (whether this is good or bad I have not decided yet). That ad was more than a year ago.

This time the Facebook fan page had 1,457 fans. In a 48 hour span the ad has resulted in 78 new fans, averaging a cost per click of 20 cents (USD) and cost per new fan of 49 cents (USD). Seems a little high – I suppose that’s partly from being less stringent with keywords so that I catch a broader market which may result in more people clicking the ad but not “liking” the page.

I’m curious what running an ad on one of the major search engines would be like.